Do you dream of love? I know I do. In my dreams, love comes in so many forms. In the form of animals, or plants, or birds, of people in my life and people I have never before seen, of celebrities, of huge crowds of people, of children playing games together in a circle, of being told, “I just love you so much”, or “I just love taking care of you.” In my dreams I experience a purity of love that feels otherworldly, when I am singing to the birds who perch on my shoulder, or the way leaves seem to glimmer when I’m walking down a path in woods. I dream of loving so deeply, a love that transcends this binary world to create ease where there is tension, a love that nurtures a vision beyond the here and now that allows for courage, a love that meets every single person precisely where they are, and bathes them with what they need to flourish.

But more often than any of that, I dream of love’s absence. I dream of a wandering the halls, looking for my lover, feeling like we will never meet up. I dream of yearning, deeply, for someone, anyone, to love me, and feeling like it’s impossible. I dream again and again of my struggles to feel that love in my life, to live it as my truth, and to demonstrate my faith in it through my actions towards others. As someone who has historically jumped on any opportunity to critique myself and my every thought, feeling, and desire, my dreams at times have seemed to fill up this cup, demanding that I attend to them and their relentless reminders that I am not fully measuring up, that my life is not fully aligned with love.

This push and pull, from dreams of the extraordinarily beautiful to dreams of the mundane obstacles, is part of what makes them so fascinating—and confusing. Certainly, my dreams don’t want me to beat myself up, do they? Why do they keep reminding me of the ways I fail to love then? But recently, I have come to realize dreams are relentless precisely because they are so deeply in love with us. The experiences in our dreams are simply reflections of some of our deepest truth, our unique vibration of unconditional love—and a constant lesson on learning to embrace the wholeness of our humanity in love, no matter how dark or shameful it may seem.

Once you understand that dreams are expressions of unconditional love, the meaning of your dreams becomes more clear. What’s most difficult to comprehend, really, is the magnitude and degree of internal transformation that is often required to accept the truth of unconditional love. All of this may sound strange, especially if you are someone who often has scary or painful dreams. But dreams have taught me that our fear and our pain is not something to be ashamed of…but rather a direct road back to the love and wholeness that we crave.

What keeps us from experiencing love in our daily lives? Why does it feel so difficult to love ourselves? How can we cultivate lasting relationships that are built on a foundation of love? These are the questions that are at the root of so many individual struggles to find peace and a sense of wholeness in this world. And they are the precise questions that our dreams insist that we ask, and work hard to offer us answers.

When I began dreamwork in 2009, I had just graduated college. While my time in school had its ups and downs, overall I thought of myself as pretty well adjusted (spoiler alert: I wasn’t). But back then, I though my central problem was that I could not find a long-term committed partner.

It was all I wanted, really. I tried to make it work with a lot of different people but it never really clicked. I knew the problem was me. What was wrong with me that I couldn’t find a partner? How could I fix it so I could experience love? This was the motivation for me beginning my journey with dreams.

There is a part of me that thinks of my younger self as beyond naïve. It was sweet when I thought not having a partner was at the root of all of my problems. And it was a rude awakening when I finally did meet my now husband and realized, in fact, I still had many, many more years of work to do on myself before I would feel whole.

But in another light, I can feel the yearnings of my younger self and treasure them. Because without our desire to feel love in our lives, without all the myriad ways we dream of love manifesting in our experience, I don’t know if we would ever have the determination and courage it takes to truly grow, transform, or heal. It is our dream of what love can be that gives us the motivation and strength we need when it feels like love is nowhere to be found.

In this sense, I do think love, or perhaps more to the point, a yearning for it, is what makes the world go around. And it is precisely when we acknowledge this yearning that our dreams meet us, and show us the way back. When the flow of love feels blocked in your life, it can feel nothing is possible. And yet, if we can muster just the slightest bit of belief that love still lives, our dreams come to us, again and again, showing us precisely where to look for it.

And so I invite you on such a journey with your dreams. When we approach our dreams as consistent, intimate, and piercing experiences of unconditional love, a new world of felt experience opens up within us, allowing for a total transformation of our understanding of ourselves and our world. Allow me to be your guide in receiving your dreams in this way, illuminating the pathway back to the love you’ve always dreamed of. It’s a path for the courageous—only for those willing to be uncomfortable and confronted for the sake of healing, transformation, and growth. But I promise you, the joy of reclaiming the love that has always lived in your heart will make all the struggles of the path well worth it.

What’s the most powerful expression of love you’ve ever felt in a dream? Would you share it here? I would love it!

With all my love dreamers,
Kezia Vida